


Emptying the Empty

by twowolvesinatrenchcoat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abaddon wants to rule hell, Alastair wants to torture Cas and Dean, Angst, Angst and Fluff, Asmodeus wants to torture Gabriel, Azazel and Ruby want to torture Sam, But Cas is back so it’s okay, But unfortunately so are several other people, Cas has had enough of these idiots, Chuck messed up, Dean Winchester has repressed bisexuality, Dean comes out as bi, Destiel - Freeform, Destiel kisses very quickly, Fix it of sorts, Fluff, Fluffy Angst, Gabriel Has Issues, Gabriel is alive too, Graphic Torture, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Jack uses he/they pronouns, No Smut, Post-Season/Series 15, Sabriel - Freeform, Sabriel is slow burn, Sam Winchester Has Powers, There’s a lot of torture, Torture in detail, Whump, and Crowley, angsty fluff, but Gabriel is very flirty, enjoy your pain you nerds, everyone comes back to life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:02:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29937294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twowolvesinatrenchcoat/pseuds/twowolvesinatrenchcoat
Summary: When Chuck resurrected Lucifer, he created a rip in the Empty that he never got a chance to close. This rip starts leaking, and the angels and demons who should be sleeping in silent death find themselves waking back up, weak and battered, but alive. The first one to come back is Castiel, who returns home to the bunker. He may be the first, but he’s not the last. When Dean gets a call from Crowley, the Winchesters realize that the world they’ve just saved is in danger once again.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Donna Hanscum/Jody Mills, Gabriel/Sam Winchester, Kaia Nieves/Claire Novak, everyone/therapy
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Emptying the Empty

Dark. Cold. Silent. Nothingness stretched out, noiseless and infinite, a liquid blackness, with no life, no breath, sinking deeper, like the final stages of drowning, where there is no more struggle, no more pain, only drifting, lulled by the waves. 

The drowned body fell through the endless, weightless waters, farther than where light can reach. Gravity took a hold on the body and pulled it down, deeper and deeper, fathom by fathom, into the darkness, into the silence, into the emptiness, and there was no solid ground, nothing to land on, just infinitely stretching trenches with no seabed in sight, and nothing else in sight either. No sight, no sound, no smell, no taste. 

But the body could feel. It felt the cold, electrifying its nervous system, then the heat bubbling up from the cracks in the layers of the earth, and the pressure, the suffocating pressure of endless water, weighing down like the fate of the universe upon one’s shoulders. This body had felt that same pressure before.

The crushing weight, the ice from the sea, the magma welling up from between tectonic plates, and it could feel again.

It couldn’t surrender to death, it couldn’t drown. It thrashed, it clawed at inky saltwater, it opened its mouth to scream with air it didn’t have in its lungs. It could not sink again, it could not fall again, it could not die again.

Beneath it, the earth shifted, and tectonic plates split open with a burst of magma, light, and color, and heat scorching through the water to scald the body as gravity pulled it through red and gold, through black, through searing fire, through darkness, through light, through nothing, through everything, towards the core of the earth, towards the surface of the earth, dragging it up and down, left and right, as it struggled and screamed, fighting against the burning in its lungs, its full lungs, its empty lungs, its screaming lungs--

Before the body broke through the surface of the Empty and the surface of the sea.

Wheezing, gasping, choking, spitting out icy water. The body was no longer just a body, he was a man, a living man. And he was something more.

With each inhale, a little more light came back to him. Pinpricks of white all above him, and the blurred colors in the distance. Hues faded into place, illuminated by the moon and stars and far-off city lights.

His hands appeared in front of him, clinging to wet sand as he hauled himself from the water to heave and vomit up half an ocean onto the shore, the salt and stomach bile burning his throat. With his lungs and stomach clear, he could crawl, hauling his wet form across the sand, fragments of seashells dashed against the rocks by the waves digging into his palms. 

He tilted his head up to look at the city. Its lights pulled him, drew him forward. a beacon, like the moon to hatchling turtles, and he managed to stagger to his feet and take a few steps before falling back to his knees.

When he fell, his hand crunched a frail object he hadn’t noticed till it shattered into several pieces of green glass.

A discarded beer bottle. He knew it by the smell.

The spotty light from the moon and the city skated over the cracked edges, streaking in thin lines, and reflecting his face back at him. He stared into his own eyes, vivid blue, and his hair, black and damp, his clothes, ragged and sand-stained. He’d paled, waxy skin contrasted by half-moon circles under his eyes darker than bruises and the shadow of stubble ghosting his jawline. He’d looked better, but he still looked recognizable, just enough that he could remember his name. He could remember who he was, what he was, what he’d done, and why he had to keep moving, crawling up the beach, even though his legs were too weak to carry his weight.

He mumbled his identity, his purpose, under his breath as he dragged himself through the sand, a prayer, or a mantra, to push himself forward.

He’d forgotten who he was before. He’d forgotten why he’d been put on this earth. But he would never forget again. He had a life to return to now, he had hope, and maybe he didn’t have a fate or a destiny anymore but he had something better, something he’d fought to the death to hold onto.  
He had free will.

“My name is Castiel Winchester,” he told himself, voice raw and ragged from where it had been torn up by the salt grating like sandpaper against his throat. “My name is Castiel Winchester. I’m an angel of the Lord. And I’m going home.”

\---

“He said he loved me,” Dean confessed. He took a sip of his beer before he continued. “And then the Empty took him. I mean, I didn’t even have time to think or react, and now he’s gone and we don’t even have a body to burn.”

Sam nodded, sipping his own beer. To be honest, he’d suspected Cas’s feelings, and Dean’s as well, but he’d never said anything. Maybe he should’ve.

“I wish Jack had stayed a little longer,” Dean sighed. “Then we could’ve asked him to bring Cas back. But now he’s off doing his own thing, remaking Heaven and all that, and I dunno, I just feel like I wasted my chance.” He finished his beer, tossed it in the trash, and got up to get another one. “I wasted so many damn chances with him.”

“Um,” Sam started, the words fizzling out before they began.

“What?”

“I know this is probably the last thing you wanna talk about right now, but did you love him? Not as a friend, or as family. I know you love--loved--him platonically, and familially. But did you, um…” 

Dean sighed and sank into his chair. He cracked open his beer bottle with the edge of a knife. “Romantically?”

“Yeah.”

Sam watched Dean stare into his beer, willing him to be honest, not just with Sam, but with himself. To think and reflect on what he thought and felt instead of shoving it all aside as he did with any other emotion, shoving it out of sight like a child hiding the mess in their room by shoving it all under the bed.

“To be honest, I didn’t think about it till he confessed to me. I didn’t let myself think about it. But I guess I started to think about it when we were in that barn, remember, with the spear?” He waited for Sam’s nod before he went on. “He said ‘I love you’ then too, and he looked right at me. I didn’t know what kind of love he meant. I should’ve asked, son of a bitch I should’ve asked.”

Sam chose not to tell Dean that a lot of his problems could be solved with some communication.  
“If I had the chance, if I had Cas back, I think I’d wanna give it a try, see where it goes.”

Sam took another sip of beer. Maybe he should set it aside and get water instead. That might help with the headache stabbing behind his eyes. He shrugged the pain aside, just something to deal with later. Right now, he had to listen to his brother. He could offer that much, at least. 

“So Cas being a man isn’t a problem?”

Dean laughed, but the sound only crawled out of his throat, a dull, mirthless echo, alongside a smile that didn’t reach his bloodshot eyes. “No, that’s no problem at all. I’ve mostly been into women, but there’s been a few men that I just can’t help but find attractive. Dr. Sexy was my first man-crush. I’ve experimented a bit, but not much. I never told anyone, didn’t want Dad to find out.”

“You could’ve told me,” Sam blurted before he could stop himself.

“Yeah, I could’ve. I should’ve. I guess a part of me was ashamed of it, or afraid of it. I only really let myself think about it when I could be sure there were no consequences. Like in Purgatory. Remember Benny?”

“You and him? Really?”

Dean snorted. “Yeah. It wasn’t serious. I was too focused on finding Cas to think about love, and I think he knew that too. Hey, did I ever tell you that Crowley flirted with me?”

Sam almost choked on his drink. “No, you most certainly didn’t.” If Dean had ever told him that, he would have remembered, and maybe used it against Crowley, or against Dean, or both of them. “Did you two, ah, y’know…”

“Ew, no. He’s not my type.” Dean slammed his empty bottle on the table. 

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

Not that it would matter anyway. Crowley was dead, had been for a long time, and he couldn’t just come back. Crowley resisted death with the scrappiness of a cockroach, but not even he could come back. If Jack hadn’t left, maybe, but without him, no one would be returning from the Empty, and that meant Cas was dead, really dead this time.

“We could burn the coat--”

“No.” Dean tossed his beer bottle in the trash where it broke against the first one. He stood up, chair scraping across the floor. “I need to go let Miracle out.”

Dean left, and once Sam was alone, he sucked in a deep breath and rubbed his fingers against his temples in a fruitless attempt to ease his swelling headache, but it didn’t fade away, it just kept pushing against his skull. Maybe he should take painkillers, or cold medicine.  
He could be coming down with something, actually. That would explain why he’d been having constant headaches for the past few days.

\---

Dean never thought he would have a dog. It seemed like part of that “apple pie life” he could never have. A life completely dependent on him, like a kid. Dean had tried being a father before, with Lisa, and that failed. He tried to help out with Jack, after getting over what Jack was, and at least Jack turned out great, though that was mostly Cas’s work, the one who raised him, protected him, believed in him.

If only Dean had just listened to Cas. If only Dean had just believed in Jack. If only Dean had taken a chance instead of hiding who he was.

If only, if only…

But Miracle didn’t seem to mind his mistakes. He looked at Dean with reverence, with love, never expecting anything back. He gave freely, and dammit had Dean needed that love. The day after they’d saved the world, when the weight of everything that had happened slammed into Dean with the force of a truck, he collapsed in bed and didn’t move.

He’d laid there and thought about Cas.

Sam checked in on him, but gave him his distance to grieve. People came by, other family and hunters suddenly brought back to life by Jack, to offer their thanks, their congratulations, their support. Jody and Donna and their girls, Charlie, Garth, Bobby, even Rowena, taking a quick vacation from her duties as Queen of Hell. Dean only spoke to them if they came by his room, and even then, barely even a hello. He felt like a dick for not saying more, but what could he say? Sure, the world was safe, but what was the point of the world if Cas wasn’t in it?

Miracle had gotten him out of bed, by shitting on the floor of all things.

Since he didn’t want to keep breathing in that horrendous stench, he’d gotten up to clean it, and since he was already up, he’d figured he should take a shower and grab a beer. 

But Jody and Donna were still there, and they’d both hugged him, before he could get to the shower, and then he’d really be a dick if he didn’t stay and talk for a minute, so he sat on the couch with them, told them about how he and Sam and Jack had finally gotten rid of Chuck, filling in the few details Sam had omitted, and then he and Claire started talking about hunting, comparing their techniques, and damn he had to admit the kid had some skill.

She wasn’t Jody’s girl for nothing. And he could see some of Cas in her too.

He’d only left the room when Claire kissed Kaia, because seeing two people kiss just made him think of Cas, and how he could’ve had something like that with Cas if only he’d been a little braver. He’d excused himself, awkwardly, and mumbled something about how he needed to take a shower cause he smelled horrible.

He got out just in time to say goodbye to Jody, Donna, and their daughters, and then he’d retreated to his room again.

But he didn’t stay in there. 

Dean had to admit that talking about what happened with Sam did help him to cope with it. So instead of hiding away in his room, he talked to Sam, and it helped him get his thoughts straight, but it still didn’t ease the grief.

He’d lost Cas before, many times, but this time was final, and no amount of talking it out or holding Miracle close at night and crying into his fur would change that.

So when Dean walked up the stairs to the bunker door, Miracle trotting beside him, he never could’ve expected to pull open the door, receiving a facefull of chilly night air spelling of grasses and farmland, and hear the very voice he’d been hoping for, wishing for, dreaming for, praying for.

“Hello, Dean.”


End file.
